Justin Kendall provides daily coverage of the beer industry on Brewbound.com, conducts live-streamed interviews during Brewbound’s events and co-produces the Brewbound podcast. Kendall is a nearly 20-year career journalist who led alt-weekly newspapers in Kansas City, Missouri, and Des Moines, Iowa.
Employees at Anheuser-Busch (A-B) InBev-owned Widmer Brothers Brewing have voted to join Teamsters Local 162, the union announced. Stony Creek Brewery has been approved by its hometown of Branford, Connecticut to construct a new tank farm, which would expand the company’s brewing capacity from 48,000 barrels, to 100,000 barrels.
Virginia state lawmakers are considering a pair of bills that would require retailers to keep alcoholic versions of non-alcoholic beverages, such as Hard MTN Dew, Fresca Mixed, Simply Spiked and Topo Chico Hard Seltzer, separate from their counterparts, according to Pluribus News.
Hard seltzer searching for its floor has been a theme of Wall Street analyst reports over the last year. That line appeared again in the most recent “Hard Seltzer Dashboard” by Jefferies’ Kevin Grundy, which noted that hard seltzer’s share of total beer category dollar sales in Q4 2022 was the lowest point the segment had seen since the start of the pandemic.
Allagash Brewing Company is going statewide in Illinois. Plus, Memphis, Tennessee-based Wiseacre Brewing has added statewide distribution in Virginia via Specialty Beverage.
Beer will be the alcoholic beverage of choice for consumers planning to imbibe while watching Super Bowl LVII, according to market research firm Numerator, which shared the results of a consumer survey conducted from January 25-31.
San Diego-headquartered Kings & Convicts Brewing, which acquired Ballast Point from Constellation Brands in late 2019, will vacate the Encinitas taproom and Miramar production facility it took over from Molson Coors in January 2022.
Low-and-no or high ABV? Which way to go? Coming out of Dry January, there are plenty of new entrants — both new and established — making non-alcoholic beer. And on complete other end of the spectrum are growing sales of higher ABV beers.
Braxton Brewing Co. has formed a partnership with brand investment marketer Andrew Sauer to spin off its Garage Beer light lager into a new company: Garage Beer Co.
After a choppy 2022 that included a CO2 shortage and layoffs, Night Shift is narrowing its focus on its core offerings in the new year, homing in on Whirlpool New England pale ale as its first flagship offering, adding popular packaging formats such as variety can 12-packs and single-serve cans and launching an evergreen brand campaign.
Boston Beer Company’s 2023 Samuel Adams Super Bowl ad will imagine a kinder and “brighter” Boston, starring “Your Cousin From Boston,” Boston Celtics legend Kevin Garnett and comedian Lenny Clarke.
Brand families are nothing new in the beer business. Within craft beer, they’re spreading like a zombie outbreak, which is fitting given the abundance of news about a few dead guys and a certain skeleton this week.